


i just called to say

by hi_raeth



Series: reblog (mini fics + prompt fills) [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, but it ends happy and sappy because this is me we're talking about, fears of loss and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17616857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Rey's world comes crashing down on a Wednesday afternoon, and if Ben could just answer one of her twenty calls so that she knows the secret love of her life is not trapped in his burning office building, that'd be great.





	i just called to say

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Stevie Wonder's _I Just Called to Say I Love You_.

“Rey!”

“What is it?” Rey hollers out her open door, craning her neck from her spot on the bed to see if she can catch a glimpse of Finn and pinpoint the cause of his summons.

The urgent call comes again, and this time Rey is able to determine that Finn is nowhere near her. He and Poe take turns calling out for her as she wanders into the living room, and a heavy knot of concern and fear begins to form low in her stomach as the two of them come into view, each more pale and stricken than Rey has ever seen them.

Finn is waiting for her, reaches out as soon as he spots her, but by then Rey has caught sight of the TV beyond Poe’s shoulder and the big, bold letters spelling out _BREAKING NEWS!_ and fire, so much fire, consuming an all-too-familiar building.

“Oh god,” Rey whispers, knees buckling as the flashy _breaking news_ banner gives way to _Inferno in Downtown Coruscant_ and below that, in smaller letters as if it’s any less significant, as if her world hasn’t just come to a grinding halt: _Amidala House consumed by sudden blaze._

“Shit!” Finn gasps, lunging forward to catch her before she can hit the ground, but Rey can’t find the words to thank him, can’t find the will to look away from the nightmare unfolding on the TV screen.

She vaguely registers him and Poe helping her to the couch, keeps her eyes glued to the sight of Amidala House being reduced to ash and rubble until Poe presses something into her hand.

“Call him,” he suggests gently, closing Rey’s fingers around her phone.

Ben. She needs to call Ben, because sometimes good things happen in this world and Ben was one of them and she needs another good thing now, she needs him to not be in that building and part of the _13 people trapped in rapidly destabilizing structure_ but oh god, what if he is? What if he’s somewhere inside that burning building on her screen and his lungs are filling up with smoke as Rey does nothing but watch on and he dies on live TV, right in front of her very eyes?

“Hey!”

Rey snaps out of it with a slight jump, turns to her left to find Finn’s nails digging crescents into her free palm and his wide, panicked eyes steady on hers. “Breathe, Rey. Just breathe. C’mon, with me. In, out, in–”

She follows his lead without further prompting, well used to this routine even if it takes her a while to connect it with her short, shallow breaths and panic attacks.

When she finally gets some air into her lungs and manages to keep it there for more than two seconds, Poe carefully plucks her phone from her hand, enters the passcode he’s not supposed to know, and brings up Ben’s number.

“Here we go,” he says softly, handing Rey the phone with shaking hands. “Call him, Rey. We need to know. You need to know.”

The corner of her screen tells her it’s 1:22 in the afternoon, just eighty-two minutes after Ben’s last message to her – Ben who brings lunch to work, Ben who once spent thirty straight minutes ranting about _a shovel, Rey! Who the fuck serves food in a shovel, I’m not eating off fucking_ gardening _tools–_

Ben, who is almost definitely inside that building, the same way he always is at this time of the day, eating lunch in his office.

Before she can spiral back into a panic attack, Finn wraps an arm around her shoulder and holds her close while Poe takes her free hand and gives it a comforting squeeze.

“It’s going to be okay, Rey,” he promises her and she wants, _so_ badly, to believe that it will.

So Rey hits the call button.

 

* * *

 

She leaves a message, begging him to call her back through a voice thick with tears.

Ten minutes pass while the fire rages on.

Twenty minutes, and a handful of people manage to make their way out of the building before all exits are completely blocked.

Thirty minutes, and firefighters announce that they’re well on their way to putting out the blaze.

Forty minutes, and they start heading into the building to see who’s left.

“We’ll be right back with more information for loved ones,” the on-site reporter tells the camera gravely, and Rey chokes on a sob as she jumps off the couch and runs into her room.

Finn gives her five minutes to cry her heart out before he tentatively pokes his head in and asks, “Anything yet?”

Rey wipes her tears away and doesn’t tell him that she’s called close to twenty times now, that Ben’s inbox filled up a while ago and there’s so much she didn’t say, so much she might never get to say–

“He’ll call back,” she declares with borrowed confidence, leaning heavily on his and Poe’s comforting support and endless assurances. “Any minute now, he’ll call back.”

“I’m sure he will, Peanut,” Finn tells her, because what else is there to say when the reality of the situation hangs heavy in the air, filling every silent second between spoken words with fear unlike anything she’s ever known before?

He gives her one last smile, turns to leave–

“Finn?” she whispers, half-expecting, half-hoping for him to miss it.

“Yeah?”

With her knees drawn to her chest, Rey squeezes her eyes shut as she asks, “Have they released any names yet?”

She can hear Finn cross the threshold into her room, but she can’t bring herself to open her eyes when he curls a heavy hand around her shoulder. “No,” Finn finally says. “No names yet.”

Rey lets out a shaky breath and acknowledges him with a nod, waits until Finn closes the door behind him to collapse back into bed.

No news is good news, she tells herself even as she holds her phone in a white-knuckled grip.

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is, three years ago this wouldn’t have bothered her at all.

Well, okay, it would have bothered her _a little_ , hearing that the boy who lived down the street from her had passed away at such a young age. But that’s all Ben was to her, for the longest time: the boy from down the street, then the weird kid Maz’s friends brought to dinner sometimes, then the guy she’d sometimes catch a glimpse of in the hallways when she was a freshman and he was a senior.

They didn’t even have their first proper conversation until five years after their first meeting, when Rey unexpectedly ran into him in college and found out that he’d been going to the University of Theed for the past three years. Ben had changed by then, traded in the perpetual black cloud she remembered so well from high school and dinner parties for a teasing smile and a confident walk, and somewhere along the way they finally managed to form the kind of friendship everyone expected from two kids whose parents were close friends.

And now – now he’s one of her closest friends, her first good morning and last good night, the only person who knows her better than even Finn, better than herself. They speak nearly every day even when weeks go by without them meeting because of college and work commitments, and everyone else in her life knows that whenever she smiles at her phone he’s most likely the cause–

God, Rey can’t bear the thought of it: of never getting a random text from him again, of never hearing the smile in his voice while he listens to her rant about classes, of never getting the chance to tell him that… that she…

Her phone rings.

It’s been an hour. It’s been _an hour_ , and Rey nearly falls off her bed as she dives for her phone, drops it twice before she finally picks up the call.

“Hey, is everything okay? I just saw your missed calls–”

A sob rips past her throat at the sound of his voice, and the immediate shift in his tone makes her heart feel like it’s going to burst.

“What’s wrong? What happened? Where are you, sweetheart, I’ll come get you right now–”

“Ben,” Rey manages to say despite her confusion. “Ben, the building burned down, I thought… I thought you…”

He’s still not making sense. “Which building? Are you hurt? Where are you, Rey, just tell me where you are–”

If he could stop worrying about her for one second and just _realize–_ “Ben!” she finally snaps, interrupting his panicked stream of words. “Ben, _your_ building. Amidala House. It burned down–”

“What?”

“It burned down and I thought… oh god, Ben, I thought… you always have lunch in your office, and I called and called but I didn’t hear back from you, and it’s been an hour and there are _names_ , Ben, names on the news of people who didn’t… of people who…” She’s breathing hard, shaking so badly it feels like her lungs are rattling too much to catch her breath, and Rey can’t do anything about it, paralyzed all over again by the thought that he could have… that she almost…

“Fuck,” Ben mutters to himself. “ _Fuck_ , I’m so sorry, sweetheart. It’s Wednesday. I have lunch with my mom on Wednesdays, remember? We go to the French place near her office and put our phones away?”

It’s Wednesday. Of course it’s Wednesday, how could she not have– “I didn’t… I couldn’t… God, Ben, I was so scared, I couldn’t think straight, I saw the building on TV and all that fire and I just…”

There are people dead. Four, at last count, and Ben could’ve been one of them, and she would’ve found out by seeing his name on the screen, by hearing it from a stranger putting on her best _we’re so sorry for your loss_ voice. Rey whimpers at the thought.

“I’m coming over, okay?” Ben says, and in the background she hears the familiar beep of his car. His car over in North Coruscant where Leia’s office is, a twenty-minute drive from Amidala House, a world away from all that fire and destruction and loss.

Rey finally gets a grip, clears her throat and wipes away her tears as she tells him, “No, it’s okay, you don’t have to–” Her protests sound weak even to her own ears, but Ben has bigger things to worry about, better things to do than comfort his panicked mess of a friend while clouds of smoke still darken the sky over his office and his employees line the streets with tears on their faces and shock blankets wrapped around them.

“I’m on my way,” Ben insists. “If I just spent an hour thinking I’d lost you, the only thing I’d want would be to see you. Does that sound like it’ll help?”

Yes. Yes, it would, and she can’t help but tell him as much.

“Then sit tight, I’ll be there soon. I doubt anyone will have a problem with me taking the rest of the day off, anyway,” he says wryly, trying to lighten the mood. Rey appreciates the effort, she really does, but there’ll be no relief until he’s here, until the sight of him replaces the image of him dead and gone that’s still imprinted on the back of her eyelids like a nightmare–

“I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Soon, he’ll be here soon, she can tell him soon, but they’ve already wasted so much time and that’s what she always told herself anyway, that she’d tell him _soon_ , and today she nearly lost that chance for good–

“Ben,” Rey whispers as her heart begins to pound.

“Yes?”

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “I love you.”

There’s a terrible, awful pause after that, one that threatens to fill her eyes with tears once more. “I love you too, sweetheart,” Ben says probably just seconds later, even if it feels like a lifetime, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he does but that’s not it, that’s not what she means–

“No, Ben, _listen_. I love you,” Rey says again, and suddenly the words come pouring out of her. “I love-love you. The kind of love that makes me feel like all the books and movies talk about. The kind of love that makes you the most important person in my life. The kind of love that made me feel like a part of me died when I thought I’d lost you.”

Her heart is racing and her lungs are burning by the time she’s done, and it’s ridiculous, completely ridiculous, but she still can’t breathe until he says, “You’re not losing me that easily, sweetheart.”

And then: “I love-love you too,” Ben tells her, a slight chuckle in his voice, and she allows it to wash over her like the relief that fills her bones. “Have for a long time now,” he adds, and Rey falls back against her pillows, too surprised to hold it together.

“Really?”

“Really,” he assures her. “We can talk about it when I get there, okay? I’m about to start driving.”

“Okay,” Rey says. And then, just because she can now, she ends the call with, “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Ben replies without pause, without thought, and Rey stares at her phone for the longest time after he hangs up until she realizes–

“Finn!” she calls out as she jumps up from her bed and tears out of her room. “Poe! He’s fine, Ben’s fine–”

 

* * *

 

Because Finn truly is the best friend a girl can ask for, he drags Poe out of the apartment under the guise of getting groceries for dinner just minutes later.

Rey splashes more cold water on her face than she probably needs to, and then busies herself with the dishes from lunch as she tries to process the last ten minutes. The last hour, really, because going from thinking she’d lost Ben for good to hearing him say he loves her back has been quite the whirlwind. She’s so caught up in processing it that she doesn’t even realize twenty minutes have passed until she hears a knock.

“Rey?” Ben calls out, voice muffled by the door, and she barely takes the time to dry her hands before she runs out of the kitchen.

There are a dozen ways she could greet him, a hundred ways their first conversation as two people openly in love with each other could go.

None of them involve Rey throwing the door open and promptly bursting into tears, but that’s how it unfolds anyway.

Ben holds her through it all, rubbing soothing circles into her back while she destroys his nice shirt with her blubbering. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it just… it didn’t really hit me until right now, I think, because I thought I’d never get to see you again and here you are–”

“Shh,” Ben comforts her as he guides her into the apartment and closes the door behind him. “I’m okay, sweetheart, I’m right here. Not going anywhere, I promise.”

When she finally gets her first good look at him, Rey wonders how the hell she could’ve been so blind. _God,_ the way Ben looks at her.

“I love you,” she tells him, overcome by the need to say it again and see his reaction in person. His smile coaxes a matching expression out of her as her tears subside. “I love you so much, and I thought I’d never get to tell you–”

“But you did,” Ben reminds her before she can let her fears take hold of her again. “You did, and I love you too, Rey, more than you could possibly imagine–”

Rey pulls him down for a kiss, the first of many.

A lifetime’s worth, even.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the fic I was meant to write and post today, but I was struggling with that one and thought a quick little ficlet might help me work through the block. 
> 
> "Quick little ficlet," I said. Look at this monster. If you made it through the whole thing without just skimming large chunks of it, I am in awe of you. As always, thanks for reading, hope you guys liked at least some of it, and please don't hesitate to leave a comment!


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